It was freezing the weekend of the event. The high only reached 10 degrees F. Blue Mountain Lake was frozen solid. While writing my novel Imaginary Brightness, I did a lot of research on how people traveled in the 1800s during winter months in the Adirondacks. The roads were not passable in the snow and there were no plows around to clear them, so what did people do? They skied, or snow-shoed, or took horse and sleigh over the lakes. It was the quickest route from point A to point B.

This could get treacherous during spring thaw. I read in one biography about William W. Durant that he demanded his driver travel by sleigh across an Adirondack Lake during this particularly risky time.

As a matter of fact, I hadn't planned on it, but I ended up doing a lot of research on ice and signs of thinning and melting ice so I could incorporate the information into my story.

I discovered that thawing ice makes a racket. As the trapped air bubbles escape and the ice expands and contracts during spring thaw, the melting ice makes loud cracks, creaks, and pings. Glacial Scientists actual study the phenomena.

While I was writing my book I tried to describe the sounds that melting ice gives off. So I listened to video tapes of it on Youtube.

Pinging is probably the best word I could find to describe the sound. Maybe you have heard it personally and have your own descriptive word.